Rivers Run Backward
by Zaedah
Summary: Upon leaving the towering, Lego-inspired building, Natalie Durant was heard invoking the Keystone Kops.


_For my 100th posted story, I wanted to come back to where the journey began; Medical Investigation. I've made a few dear friends in this category (Syd, Alamo, Hidden, Radiant, Gnomy, D.I.) and owed it to you faithful MIers to give you a little something from my heart. This is a case driven piece and not shippy, miraculously.  
_

_This is for my daddy, Unega Waya; a proud Native American, Cherokee history teacher and storyteller. Chapter two is forthcoming.  
_

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**Rivers Run Backward**

Of all the people who intimidated Miles McCabe, none made him feel smaller than men of wisdom. Insight born of life experience is a commodity the older generation seems compelled to dangle before him. Never has he had occasion to say, "When I was your age," and the last time he said, "In my experience," the eye roll looked painful. In his profession, wisdom was often as sought after as a cure, though coming up empty was made considerably easier by his baby face. No one expected the twelfth grader in a lab coat to pull astuteness from his pocket. That he was closer to thirty than twenty lent him no credibility.

Certainly he was well-traveled. Medical cases had brought him from one coast to the other and in any game of been-to-that-state bingo, a victory was guaranteed. Mentally, he slid a red chip onto the square marked Tennessee as he hovered over a man who'd seen better days. Fortunately, the comatose John Doe required no wisdom from Miles just yet.

In the coal rich city of Kingsport TN rested the stout Indian Path Hospital, a 330 bed, 640 employee center where the team had been mistakenly dispatched. Apparently the patient in question, an unnamed Native American, was stationed at a smaller local facility. The patient had staggered into the rural center, which lay in a mixed-tribe community and remained there due to full beds at the larger hospital. Upon leaving the towering, Lego-inspired building, Natalie Durant was heard invoking the Keystone Kops while Stephen Connor had merely sighed and plugged the corrected address into his GPS. And found the little place wasn't even on the map.

The place where Miles and his coma patient now breathed the country air looked like several double wide-trailers had been hot glued together. Rustic was being polite, though the empty hanging baskets tacked to the awning managed to spruce it up. A bit. Once inside, the ramshackle building took on the properties of Doctor Who's Tardis. Sprawling and homey, the place made a seasoned, difficult to surprise team cast marveling eyes about. Frank had suggested they all step outside and walk back in, as if to insure the magic wouldn't reproduce. But Connor had wandered off to the front desk while an expert diagnostic team took in an array of artifacts like tourists.

Resplendent with a buffalo skull and loom-woven rug, the greeting area was operated efficiently by two laptops, a small switchboard and a smiling girl. Thick black hair loosely bound, her fingers were flying over the condensed keyboard when Connor interrupted. When she smiled, tanned cheeks bunched under dark eyes as she pointed to the late middle-aged man in a leather vest and biker boots. The over-blonde doctor strode to the waiting man, a thin fellow with black hair valiantly fending off gray. Only the temples had surrendered. A short ponytail completed the unconventional look.

By the time Miles was able to force interested eyes away from the receptionist beauty, the diagnostic discussion had already begun in earnest. As was often the case, Miles was the last boy arriving to class.

"The patient we called you about is an unknown male, approximately 21 years old." The chief physician, Webb Barker, spoke slowly as he walked unhurried through the long corridors. "We call him Joseph Doe."

Natalie peered into each room as they passed. "What did he present with?"

"Boy stumbled into reception, showing signs of prolonged fever, disorientation and then began convulsions. Shayla said he couldn't tell her his name before he went down. Right on grandma's rug." Barker shook his head; a solemn affair, this heirloom.

"And you've ruled out meningitis and encephalitis?" Connor asked, looking entirely out of place among the darker population of the facility.

Barker stopped just outside a particle board door, adjusting the scope around his neck. "Cerebrospinal fluid wasn't cloudy and showed no increased protein. CT's cranky today so we couldn't run a scan, though I do realize we shouldn't have done the lumbar puncture without one."

"In case of brain swelling," Miles threw in to show that he was a valuable part of this conversation.

Barker's casual expression saw a cringe pass briefly through it. "Well, we excluded the possibility of swelling with the aid of our resident medicine man, so I think we're okay."

By her smile, Natalie was the only one appreciative of the chief doctor's humor, but she tamped it down before turning to her supervisor. "CT wouldn't have helped in any other way, right?"

"Right." Connor stepped around Barker to enter the darkened room. "Cerebral abscess isn't common with encephalitis so swelling is the only thing it might have shown us," Stephen noted as he picked up the young man's chart, an old fashioned clipboard and flipped through quickly.

"Did you test for West Nile?" Frank's voice overran the dimmed space but the patient didn't seem to mind.

"Negative result. Same with the initial round of cultures. In the meantime, he went from lethargic to paralysis to comatose. Wide-spectrum antibiotics were started when he arrived. Luck like his you don't take to the casinos."

The team collectively peered at the youth, whose frame was a bit small for the estimated age. Still, the face was hard, already worn and his long hair was unkempt. Respitory distress was evident, even with the ventilator and when Natalie picked up his hand, long-fingered and calloused, it was found to be significantly stiff.

A handmade dreamcatcher was swinging in the window, riding an up-current from the air conditioner. On the walls were all the trappings of a southwest cabin; painted mandala, ornate deer toe rattle and a framed print of Chief Joseph. When Miles moved toward the picture to read the small words, Barker met him there, taking in the handsome face with pride.

"Since we put the patient in this room, I couldn't help but name him after one of my heroes. Great speech maker. I was hoping the trait would rub off on our silent friend here."

Below the portrait, the words 'Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain' appeared. Behind the round face, a ghostly mountain cloaked in clouds was pierced by a lightning bolt. Seeing the young doctor's confusion, Barker clapped him on the shoulder as he steered them back to the others.

"Everyone's name has meaning."

Barker's cryptic declaration could, in a stretch, be called wisdom. But Miles' own name, in Latin, meant soldier and he was pretty sure there was no wisdom in that.

"You know the drill," Connor was saying. "Retest everything. Frank and I will try to identify him, find out where he's been."

"And swab like men possessed," Frank finished with a grin.

**.......**

There was no music, Miles noticed as he watched vitals like a man possessed. Or at least functional. In truth, this was one of the most agonizingly tedious cases he'd experienced. And they'd only been there for three hours. Natalie was rerunning the blood tests, cultures and screens while he monitored. Connor and Powell had taken off to hunt down the sheriff while he monitored. Which would have been fine if something changed while he monitored. And then there was all this unruly quiet.

In an Indian hospital one might anticipate haunting drums or wood flutes, though he knew the presumption was sadly stereotypical. Certainly the décor would foster such an expectation. But nothing, not even instrumental Manilow, dressed the pervading silence. No televisions hung from the ceiling, no radios by the bed, only the humming and clicks of machines. And the man before him was determined to mute his own soundtrack. This was not a bustling place, the lack of pacers in the halls and coffee-gulpers in the cafeteria was unsettling.

A nurse would occasionally peek in, offering cruelly unneeded assistance and sometimes batting an eye just so. The smile that walked in with her was rather… personal. She was cute, if a little old for him. He'd say there was something exotic about the people here, except the very word, which hinted at distance places and foreign ways, seemed wrong when applied to the original inhabitants of this country. So he returned the glances heartily as flirting was, at best, a time passer.

Just after hour five of ceaseless monitoring, Dr. Barker reemerged with a hint of dissatisfaction.

"Still don't know who he is?" Miles asked the weary man as he folded his bones into a visitor chair with a creak. The seat pushed back against the smooth floor with a scrape of protest, no one having occupied it since the team had arrived. A shake of his head and Barker favored the younger doctor with interested eyes.

"I like this group of yours. Relentless. Not always a good thing according to the sheriff."

Miles chuckled. "Dr. Connor gave him a hard time?"

"I have the feeling," Barker grinned, "that he considers that part of his vocation. S'why I like the man, though he's hurting for a tan. Paler than white sop on momma's biscuits."

Not nearly secure enough in his job to join the mockery, Miles gestured to the patient. "What do you think his story is?"

"Not from around here. Prints ain't registered nowhere. If he's trouble, he ain't been caught before. If he's running, he ain't getting far now." Checking his watch, Barker rose and stretched. "Kid's a drifter. I can almost smell it. Only thing he's missing is a hobo's kerchief knotted to a stick. We're not light on railroads around here."

Scratching lightly at his scalp, Miles shrugged. "Guess I don't get the vagabond type. I understand wanting freedom, but there's not much future. What makes people go nomad?"

The man who had been set to leave settled back into his relaxed stance, gazing at Miles with an expression he couldn't read.

"He reminds me of a story. There was a red man of troubles with no people and no name. He began a journey, searching for both. He came upon the Mohawk, called 'the people of the flint,' and went to their leader. He told them his story and for his troubles, he blamed his father. But the Mohawk saw things missing in the man and they sent him on his way."

The voice had sent Miles to that place children go when kindly grandfather tells a tale. And he stayed in that place a few heartbeats too long because he hadn't noticed the man had moved to the doorway.

"What happened to the man?"

Barker grinned as the faint sounds of urgency carried in from reception. "Another time, my friend."

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**_TBC..._**


End file.
